Thursday, 6 September 2018

So, people at OME have expended a huge of volume of words and advice on this topic over the last year - advising on getting our clients ready for the launch and making sure they benefit from the changes that will occur to job seeker traffic. This was valuable and absolutely necessary>

I now though want to float my theory about why Google for Jobs will NOT be the seismic change in how employers generate candidate traffic* which is a counterpoint to all the articles we have all read over the last few months

* as ever I could be 100% wrong

so here goes....

1. Google are all about the user and the user experience - does Google for Jobs really and I mean REALLY change the experience significantly? It largely delivers major orgs listings on major job boards - from the user perspective - how different/better is it the mix of Indeed and job board listings before?

2. No simpler way to say this but I just don't like the look of the results page very much (in the UK) - surely that can be better?

3. Which makes me doubt how much Google are really into this. Their strategy is to embed themselves in people's lives - obviously that includes shopping, lifestyle, advice and guidance (?) etc - G4J seems quite small beer in comparison.

4. On initial data analysis - we are seeing a shift in traffic sources for jobs/adverts but it's at the edges (5-8%)and there are winners and losers but again that is NOT seismic. And obviously the universe of candidate traffic has not been expanded -its just slightly redistributed.

5. Google Pay Per Click is a net loser - so absolutely you would think that a monetising of G4J would be in the pipeline further down the line. but that is some way off.

6. G4J has been going 14 months in the USA and Indeed are doing just fine and dandy - and yes, there have been benefits to the big aggregators of jobs (LinkedIn, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter etc) but I would have been expecting those guys to continue their progress on traffic / market-share anyway.

For sake of clarity - we/you can get competitive advantage by making content/jobs SEO friendly, attractive and engaging, concise and clear - what I'm saying is that G4J doesn't change that.

OK - importantly a caveat - this is a UK snapshot as we enter Q4 2018 so things change but would love to hear from anyone who agrees/disagrees/thinks I'm clearly an idiot (actually don't bother if you are in the third group)